Indigo Springs

by A. M. Dellamonica

I do a rundown on my pager, phone, and recorder, looking for battery lights. “All dead,” I report. The idea that we aren’t being monitored comes as a relief. It is a bad sign: Astrid is engaging me, and I need to pull back.

  “What’s going on upstairs? Is Sahara here?”

  Astrid utters a lyrical mishmash of nonsense words, and suddenly I can see again. She has chanted one of the teaspoons. Light blazes from it like a torch. “Yes, Will, Sahara’s come.”

  She hands me the spoon. Its handle is chilly.

  “She’s here for you?”

  She nods. “She wants me to make her followers into people like Patience.”

  “You knew about this? Why didn’t you warn Roche?”

  A flinty smile. “I’m the bad guy, remember?”

  There is a sound of things breaking, muffled by the thick walls, and then gunfire.

  “Oh,” Astrid says. “This is the part where the guards start shooting.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Sahara’s Primas are holding off the troops.”

  “Primas, here?” I think of Caro, and my stomach burns. “What about Sahara?”

  “She’s with Ma. Will, your ring is a protective chantment. You’re completely safe.”

  “Says the alleged bad guy.”

  “She won’t keep us waiting long.” Now she does rise, leaning against her grandfather’s cabinet, breathing in its woody scent before licking the wood. Blue fluid seeps from her tongue and into its structure. The grain of the oak glimmers blue before the vitagua is absorbed.

  “Another chantment? What does this one do?”

  “Toughens things up.” She lays both hands on the cabinet and sings the cantation again. Then she sets one of the empty teacups inside, closing it. Bringing it out, she invites me to smash it.

  I clunk the delicate china against a wall and the jolt travels up my elbow. It feels diamond hard.

  “Try again?”

  “No.” The floor trembles. Astrid could have walked out of here anytime, I think. Roche ought to forget about Jemmy Burlein and the others.

  But there’s no getting out, no warning him. All I can do is my job. I raise the spoon, noting the moonlight silver of its glow, and continue the interview. “You say after your experience at the Voltone house, you could chant a wider range of items.”

  “Yes.”

  “Albert could only chant antiques. Why antiques?”

  She weighs her answer, her expression suddenly calculating. “Albert preferred things that had been loved.”

  “When did you get to the point where you could control what an item would become when you chanted it?”

  “A couple days after the batch at Voltone’s.”

  “Your learning process was accelerating.” I touch the bright bowl of the spoon. It isn’t hot; I can close my fingers over it. The blood within me glows red.

  Astrid plucks a couple of her photographs off the wall and puts them in the cabinet, toughening them up.

  I sort through the facts. “On your first trip to the unreal, the vitagua in your body froze. You became ill.”

  “Yes. I almost froze myself solid trying to contain Patterflam.”

  “And it was all ice, all of Fairyland.”

  “Yes.”

  “You took me to the unreal, and it was warm and dry.”

  She nods. “All the vitagua the witch-burners forced out of the real? It’s thawing.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. “The unreal is warming? What about the people frozen in the icebergs?”

  “They’re getting loose, of course.” She puts the paintbrush handle inside the cabinet. “Luckily for the real, most of them are too busy celebrating to think about revenge.”

  “For how long?” A flutter in my gut. I flash on campouts from my Boy Scout days, remember that I always hated ghost stories, darkness, and freaky tales.

  “Some big players are still stuck in those ice floes.”

  “Elves or something? Brownies?”

  “The fairies and leprechauns are dead. The witch-burners did a thorough job on the Old World’s magical ecosystem.”

  “Who then?”

  She gives me a moment to come up with the answer, then shrugs. “Raven, maybe? Wendigo. Quetzalcoatl.”

  “You expect me to tell Roche a bunch of old Indian myths are going to rise from the grave—”

  “And bite him on the ass? It’s true.”

  “Why would Raven be around if the fairies are gone?”

  She sighs. “Will, the witch-burners owned Europe when they started their crusade against enchantment. They had to take the Americas, inch by inch. There were people here—spirits, walking gods—and they weren’t dumb. They saw what was happening and banked their power in the unreal. They hoped their shamans and medicine women could trickle magic back drop by drop, without doing any harm—”

  “No harm? We’ve got a flood on our hands, and Sahara busted the dams.”

  “They’re busted, it’s true,” she says, voice rising. “I don’t know what I was doing.”

  She is panicking. With the paintbrush chantment locked in the cabinet, Astrid is losing track of past and present again. I open the cabinet and hand it to her.

  She gulps air for a second. “Albert’s great-great-grandmother Melissa was a proper white lady whose adopted sister happened to be Elizabeth Walks-in-Shadow. Melissa got Elizabeth’s birthright because her tribe was dead. Maybe she stole it from her, I don’t know. The Almore family—my family—got the chanting ability, but they never understood the magical well. Dad was hastily initiated and scared of its power. He didn’t trust the grumbles, and never learned how things worked. A spill was inevitable.”

  “So it’s fate? Fate’s to blame?”

  “I’m to blame,” she says. “If I’d listened to Jacks about the potlatch massacre…”

  “You can’t expect to convince anyone that what’s happening is payback for the past five hundred years. Sahara’s not Native. She’s not spearheading some anti-colonial Renaissance.”

  “Renaissance? Try Apocalypse.” She raises her gaze to the ceiling. “Those five hundred years could get wiped off the board. It could all go, Will—elections, satellite TV, presweetened breakfast cereal. Sahara’s no Renaissance. She’s out to destroy the world she used to love.”

  I laugh. “People aren’t going to give up centuries of democracy, freedom, and technology without a fight.”

  “You are fighting.”

  “You’re saying we’ll lose? Astrid?”

  “I am the one with the sneak preview. You’re just some guy who’s afraid to grow flowers in his own backyard.”

  My face heats.

  She plucks a silk begonia off one of the fake plants, chanting it. Once this crisis passes, we’ll have to put her in a cell with nothing but glass objects. How will we keep Patience from slipping things to her?

  Reciting a cantation with the fake blossom between her hands, Astrid brushes it over her wardrobe. The cabinet shrinks, becoming smaller and smaller, until it is less than an inch high. Bending to pick it off the floor, she puts it in the pocket of her shirt.

  Packing up her treasures…I try to think of ways to raise an alarm amid a blackout. “Astrid…”

  “The nice cultivated world is over with, Will. No amount of pruning or even firebombing is gonna keep the weeds from overrunning the petunias. The only questions are how long will it take and how ugly is it gonna get?”

  Below the cuffs of her shirt and under her hair, she glows with dim blue light.

  “I can’t accept that. Sahara’s not that powerful.”

  “It’s okay to be sad.” Our eyes meet and my inner criminal analyst sees how good Astrid is at engaging me. “I am. I liked the old world fine.”

  “There must be a way to stop her.”

  “Sahara? She’s just riding the flood.” She leans against the fake picture window, her breath fogging a circle on the dead, opaque glass. “Using magic to pull in the gullible, the weak—�
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  “Meaning what?”

  Another bump and more shots—closer than before.

  We’re shut down tight, I remind myself.

  The steel bolts bang open…and I am in the presence of Sahara Knax.

  She is taller than I expected. Long-limbed, willowy, and terrifying, she glows blue. She has none of Astrid’s control: the liquid roils randomly, squirting from one part of her body to another, raising her skin in bulges.

  Sahara’s long hair is mottled with the iridescent markings of starlings. Brown feathered wings sprout from her shoulder blades. Her leather coat—a blue sheath with dozens of bulging pockets—has been modified accordingly.

  Sahara’s eyes are dark and beady. Her fingers are shaped like talons, sharp-tipped and cruel. Her mouth is pursed, half a beak but still lip-pink. Necklaces dangle from her throat, bracelets from her wrists. Rings encrust her fingers.

  Two of Sahara’s so-called Primas are with her, similarly bedecked. Ev Lethewood stands between them, dressed as a man, fully bearded, ears pointed and bristling with white hairs, like a goat’s. One of the women gripping Ev’s forearm is Jemmy Burlein, Astrid’s onetime lover.

  Sahara is completely focused on Astrid.

  Jemmy moves, stepping sideways so that I, like Astrid and Ev, am encircled by the three Alchemites.

  “Time we struck a deal,” Sahara says.

  “No, it’s not that time.” Astrid smiles at her mother. “Hi, Pop.”

  “Petey,” Ev Lethewood replies, back in the grip of delusion.

  “Sahara wants me to work for her, Will. She brought Ev as a hostage. It’s not just Patterflam’s curse, you see. Albert would say she’s got the greeds.”

  “Astrid,” Sahara growls. “Stop talking to this drone and shut up about the curse.”

  “Take a person whose weakness is selfishness. Add vitagua and—”

  Sahara raises an old-fashioned cigarette case and cracks it open. A thin stream of fire burns from its opening, crisping a line across the floor, through the couch. The singed upholstery reeks and burns as she plays the flame over Astrid’s wall of photographs.

  “So you’re a firebug now?” Astrid says. Alarms ring and sprinklers chug, soaking us with chilly water. “Just like old times. Wait. When are we?” Her hand rises to her throat.

  “I will hurt her, Astrid.” Sahara glances at Ev with her dark avian eyes. “You think I won’t?”

  “Are you that far gone?”

  Trilling laughter, Sahara turns, opening her magic flamethrower full-on.

  In my face.

  A furnace of heat blows past me, scorching the air. As I flinch, raising my hands over my face, flames play over my skin…but I do not burn. My hair doesn’t so much as crisp. The heat is answered by a chilly gust from my ring. The fire goes out.

  Heart pounding, suddenly famished, I start for Sahara. Her Primas grab for my arms, and as I shake them off, something moves through me.

  It’s Patience, using her unusual ability to go misty to pass through my body. “Boo!” she shouts. Sahara back-pedals, startled. Jemmy Burlein releases Ev, groping for a chantment of her own.

  And like that, we are in the unreal again—me, Astrid, Patience, and Evelyn Lethewood. Sahara and her Primas are left behind. There’s the sound of starlings shrieking, far away. A white dust devil swirls up from the chalky soil underfoot.

  “So this is Fairyland?” Ev says, and in the same instant Patience points at the twisting vortex of sand and asks, “What’s that?”

  “Sahara’s trying to break through,” Astrid says, wrapping her mother in a tight hug. I look away as mother and daughter cling to each other, laughing and crying.

  Painted and unpainted playing cards are scattered at my feet, fluttering like windblown leaves. I bend to collect them as I ask: “Is this what I think it is?”

  “It was a jail break.” Astrid hands me a protein bar.

  “I can’t allow you to leave.”

  “You can’t stop me. You must know that by now.”

  “You can’t go,” I say. “Astrid, there are people out there who want to kill you. Unless you plan to hide in the unreal forever, your safety is at risk.”

  “You’d rather Sahara got her?” Patience slays me with a reproachful frown. Her body changed when she slid through me. She is an Aztec goddess: copper-skinned, with coal-colored hair. Her hands are exquisitely symmetrical, and she smells of cocoa.

  “What part is this?” Astrid melts into confusion and I pass over the cards. She sighs, almost petting them as she thumbs through the deck.

  “Give her a minute,” Patience murmurs to me. “Ev? Sweetie, you okay?”

  “Damn glad to be out of that cell,” Ev says. Her a’s are drawn out into goat-bleats: da-a-am, gla-a-ad. She peers at me suspiciously.

  “Hello, Mr. Burke,” I say. “I’m Will—I interviewed you Monday, remember?”

  “Sure. Good cop to Artie Roche’s bad. Been interrogating Petey? You won’t get anything out of him.”

  “Will’s okay, Pop,” Astrid says. “You’ll see.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Let’s get going, shall we?” Ev offers Patience a gallant bow and her arm, and they set out.

  Consulting her cards, Astrid looks at me. “Coming?”

  What can I do but fall in beside her? “I thought you’d jump at the chance to be with Sahara again.”

  Looking tired, she rubs her throat. “She’s no good for me.”

  “You love her.”

  “You said it yourself: She doesn’t forgive. If you remember to tell Roche anything, it’s that. I’m just another magic toy to her now.”

  “What do you want from her?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  At the top of the canyon, the heat is less intense, the land less barren. Chalk-white grass fuzzes over a series of rolling hills, and man-sized jade formations jut upward through the sod like teeth cutting up from gums. Shivering puddles of vitagua lie in the shadows of the stones.

  “We need to head east, Will? That’s the fastest route out of the compound?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “East,” Patience affirms.

  “You don’t have to come,” Astrid says. “I’m no kidnapper.”

  “You’ve got to return to custody, Astrid.”

  “You’re welcome to tag along and try to change my mind. Right, Patience?”

  Patience nods, skipping in her pointy shoes.

  “What was I talking about?” Astrid asks.

  I look at her blankly.

  She consults the card in her hand. “The Astrid day dinner. My big date with Sahara.”

  “What?” I see paint crawling over yet another card. Astrid is going on with her tale, as though we are all still locked away in the underground vault.

  It takes me a second to switch gears. “Did you tell her you wanted a romantic relationship?”

  “I didn’t get a chance. She stood me up.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I got to the restaurant on time. I’d dressed up—she’d bought me this strapless blue sheath, Indian cotton, very pretty—and I put on a touch of the magic lipstick. But no Sahara. Finally she called. Said she had to work late.

  “I drove to the station, turned on the radio. She was on the air all right, playing love songs for strangers.”

  “Did you go in?”

  “No, just listened—sulked, really—then decided I didn’t want to confront her in the parking lot. I drove around town until I was damn near out of gas.”

  “You were disappointed.”

  “Yeah. But then I decided that I’d wanted an answer from her—about us—and this was as good as any I’d get. I’d pretend dinner was no big deal….”

  “No big deal,” I echo.

  “I’d let it drop and we could stay friends.”

  “You thought that would be enough?”

  “What else could I do? She didn’t want me.”

  “Were you surprised?”


  “Well, I’d got my hopes up. Ma was better and I’d learned so much about the vitagua. Everything seemed possible. But—”

  “You’d allowed yourself to hope, then been crushed?”

  “Yeah. What was wrong with me? I had to wonder. Wasn’t I lovable?”

  Fishing the painting of the lovers out of her deck of cards, she passes it over. The image is finally complete.

  I can guess what Astrid will tell me next.

  • Chapter Twenty-Three •

  Jacks was out washing paintbrushes on the back porch when Astrid got home, pouring water from an antique bottle onto the bristles, letting the red-brown liquid spatter down onto a pile of stones. His expression was guarded.

  “What are you doing?” She was so tired that the unfamiliar pumps she’d worn to the restaurant felt like leghold traps. Her purse weighed fifty pounds.

  He set the bottle aside. “Working on a painting. The gallery thing looks like it might come through.”

  “But you’re guiding tomorrow.”

  “I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. Sahara’s careening around upstairs in a dither about where you got to.”

  “God.” She slumped.

  “You two fighting?”

  “I’m the one who’s going to be Mrs. Skye one day,” Astrid said. “Old, broke, alone. Your kids will be wangling this house out from under me.”

  Jacks wiped his hands on his shirt. “You know better.”

  “I have to get cracking if I want a family.”

  “What’s wrong with—?” He made a vague gesture encompassing the house.

  “Sahara’s only here until she finds someone interesting. Ma won’t live forever and you…”

  “What about me?”

  “You’ll marry some art promoter and move to Paris.”

  “Where I’ll blend in perfectly with the intelligentsia, no doubt.” He rubbed his nose, smearing it with paint-juice. “You’re not doomed to solitude.”

  “When’s my life gonna start, Jacks? Am I ever going to stop existing in bits of Albert’s past?”

  He kissed her.

  There was nothing gentle or hesitant about it. His lips met hers with all of Jacks’s characteristic directness. Crackling with the passion he kept bottled so tightly, the contact was sudden and startling.

  She kissed back, barely knowing why. When they broke, they were forehead to forehead, gasping.